Page 19 of So Close To Heaven (Far From Home #11)

By nightfall the army had made camp on a stretch of open ground beyond the burgh, the glow of the villagers’ hearth-fires flickering faintly across the darkening fields.

The MacKinlays clustered close to their own fires, voices hushed, the weight of Wallace’s death pressing down as heavy as the low-hanging clouds.

The men ate in silence, save for the occasional scrape of a blade against a trencher or the muttered shifting of horses.

They had not left the burgh empty-handed.

A bargain had been struck—three English horses taken in the last skirmish traded away for provisions the villagers could spare.

By the time the column turned out across the fields, pack mules bore sacks of oats and barley, a cask of salted fish, and a stout barrel of ale lashed tight against the jolting of the cart.

The gains were meager against the needs of so many men, but even a mouthful more of grain or a draught of ale promised a small reprieve.

Alaric kept himself apart. He sat against a rough-barked oak far removed from the firelight, his back to the main camp and warm fire, an uneaten oatcake in his hand.

His men had taken the news hard and while he felt no different, he’d learned to mask it better.

Wallace’s loss was a wound to Scotland itself, and though Alaric would not let his grief weaken him before the men, it gnawed at him like a dull blade sawing bone.

It had been Wallace himself, a year past, who had shown him how to fight as the outnumbered must fight—not in grand charges, but in sudden strikes from wood and crag.

The war of shadows , Wallace had called it, the craft of ambush and retreat, harrying the foe until even the mighty English grew weary.

Alaric had taken those lessons to heart.

They had kept his men alive this past year, kept the flame of resistance flickering though not fully quenched.

And now the man who had taught him was gone, cut down not in battle but by English cruelty, leaving the burden of the fight heavier upon every shoulder.

Footsteps whispered against the grass, light and halting. He did not lift his head, though every muscle in him braced. The tread was soft, uncertain, so much so that he guessed who approached—Ivy Mitchell—before she revealed herself, moving around the tree to stand before him.

When at last he raised his gaze, she stood before him tensely, pale in the fire’s glow.

She wore the same strange garb he had first seen her in more than a week past: the black trews that clung to her limbs, the soft pink tunic, and the odd green cloak that fell to her thighs.

He could not fathom how she kept the garments so clean, for she did not appear overly road-worn, though she had marched and ridden the same harsh miles as the rest. The dim firelight drew out the wear in her face, the faint hollowness at the cheeks, the leaner cast to her features since first he’d met her.

Her fire-kissed hair tumbled loose about her shoulders, shadowing eyes that seemed too large inside so small and perfect a face.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “About the death of Wallace. I know he mattered to you. To all of you.”

Alaric turned his head slightly, putting his face in full shadow. His voice came out flat, clipped. “Aye. He did.”

She lingered, biting at her lip, her fingers curling and uncurling.

“I wish there were something I could say that wouldn’t sound empty.”

“Then say naught,” he returned, with the blunt finality of a man unwilling to share what lay buried deep.

Ivy Mitchell, however, was undeterred. She lowered herself gingerly onto the grass beside him, a hand braced on her knee as she sank. She sat not directly in the shadow of the tree but outward a bit, so that the firelight danced blurry shadows across her face.

“I’m sorry for the way he died as well,” she whispered, her voice low but steady. “To have suffered that indignity—half hanging him, drawing and quartering, cutting him open—”

Alaric’s head snapped toward her, effectively silencing her.

“How could ye ken that?” he demanded, his tone harsher than intended.

To his knowledge, no one knew the exact manner of Wallace’s end.

The townsfolk had said the patriot had been executed, little more than that Wallace had been taken from the Tower of London and had been dragged through the streets to the Elms at Smithfield.

She swallowed thickly at first, her eyes widening as if caught in the act—or a lie.

But then she tilted her chin upward and met his stare without flinching.

“Because I told you before,” she said, a note of defiance threading her voice.

“I’m from the future. I’ve studied the wars, seen movies, and toured all the national heritage sites.

I know plenty about how this all turns out—England attacks, Scotland bleeds. Over and over again.”

For a heartbeat, he almost believed her.

No guile marked her face, no hesitation.

She spoke with the certainty of one repeating a truth, not spinning a tale.

But then sense returned, cold and heavy.

Impossible. Come from the future? From seven hundred years in the future? Implausible. Unreasonable. Madness.

His jaw set hard. “Enough. I’ve nae stomach just now for such idiocy, lass. Keep yer tales to yerself.” He cut the air with a sharp wave of his hand, a gesture of dismissal. “I’ll nae be dragged into yer madness.”

But she pressed on, quick, almost desperate.

“Fine. Forget what I said.” She shook her head, and her shoulders drooped a bit.

“But...can you just for a moment pretend I’m not strange, not the crazy person you obviously believe I am?

Maybe that I’m just a regular um, Scottish woman, who is lost, alone, and needing guidance?

” Her voice thinned, the edges worn with fatigue.

“Be honest with me, do you think it would be wiser for me to stay here? In this town? They must have a midwife, someone who knows better than I. And...” Though her gaze didn’t drop to her belly, her hand smoothed over its curve.

“Maybe the baby would be safer here than on the road with an army. What do you think?”

For a moment, he said nothing. Of all the men she might have asked—Kendrick, with his easy smile, or Blair, with his blunt honesty, even Ewan, who seemed so smitten of late—she had come to him .

It unsettled him, that she looked to him for guidance when he was the least likely to offer comfort.

Yet the way her voice wavered, the way her hand pressed protectively to her belly, struck a tender place he’d thought long scarred over.

She had come to him, and with that choice came an unwanted stirring—an instinct to shield, to steady, to be more than the brute he’d portrayed to her thus far.

“Why would ye ask that?” He inquired, stalling while he debated what his response should be.

Her throat bobbed. “Because I’m scared, Alaric.

I’ve never—” She faltered, then shook her head.

“I’ve never done this before, went into labor, delivered a baby.

I don’t know what to expect, or who might help me.

I don’t even know if it’s safe for me to keep riding, or if I’m hurting the baby every mile we go.

” Once begun, the words tumbled out unchecked.

“But if I stay here... if there’s a midwife.

..” she paused and shrugged. “I’m so frightened for my baby.

Forget all my own fear,” she said, “being thrust here in this time—if it were just me, I could manage, I could hold my own, I think. But I have the baby to consider, and I just don’t. ..I don’t know what to do.”

The sound of his name on her lips unsettled him, almost more than her plea.

Few ever spoke it— lad was used by Mathar and the elder soldiers, laird from the rest of his army.

Alaric. Not laird, not sir, but his name, said plain and direct.

It struck too close, threading past the armor he kept between himself and others.

He liked it—far too much, for how it warmed something in him he’d thought long cold.

And he did not like that he liked it, not when he had already judged it wiser to keep her at a distance.

His thoughts returned to her question. The thought of leaving her should have eased him.

Truly, it would be simpler—let her remain here, out of his charge, out of his sight.

She would be among women, perhaps a midwife.

She’d be spared the ceaseless march, the rigors of camp life.

He thought he should be sorry that he hadn’t thought of it.

And yet his chest tightened.

He thought of her bearing the march with stiff determination until weariness dulled her eyes and bent her shoulders.

He thought of her small hand pressed to her belly so often, coaxing strength either into the bairn she carried or from it.

He thought of how thin she’d grown in just ten days, how fragile she seemed despite the fire in her earlier words.

A woman already petite and lean, she was wilting like a bloom cut from its root.

Could she withstand the trial of birth, should it come too soon?

Even the strongest women often did not. He knew that too well.

To leave her here meant he would not see her fail—if fail she did.

He would not bear the guilt of watching another woman slip from his grasp, as Gwen had, her hand gone cold in his.

To turn Ivy over to strangers would unburden him. But the thought curdled.

Could he bear not knowing? Each day, wondering if she yet lived, if her child had come safely into the world, or if she lay in a shallow grave behind some croft?